How Do I Get to the Top of Google?

Are you struggling to get traffic to your website? Are you having trouble ranking well in Google for the best keywords? You can rank #1 and get tons more traffic. I’ll tell you how.

In this video I’ll tell you How to Get to the Top of Google.

Full Transcript:

How Do I Get to the Top of Google?

Hi, I’m Kurt Steinbrueck with OurChurch.com, and in this video, I’m going to show you how to get to the top of Google, how to get to that #1 search result that you’d like to have for your website. Now, if you ask Google, Google’s going to tell you that there are over 200 ways that they determine where websites rank, but really, if you boil it all down, it comes down to two things.

The first is that Google, they want value, just like you want value. When you buy a product, you want that product to do what you wanted it to do, so it’s valuable to you. When you click on a search result, you want that page that you end up on to have the product you were looking for or to have whatever information or entertainment it is that you were looking for. You want that page to be valuable. So does Google. So Google is looking to put the most valuable pages up at the top of the search rankings.

Now, how do they determine what a valuable website or a valuable web page is? Well, the main way that they do that is through links. We’re talking about back links here, so a link from one person’s site coming back to your site. So it’s not links on your site; it’s links from other sites linking to your sites. Basically, Google treats these links like votes or like endorsements, and so the more endorsements, the more links that you have coming to your site, the more valuable Google is going to think that you are.

Not all links are worth the same. Just like if two people were to tell you what a good restaurant is, if one was just some random guy on the street that you never met before, and the other was a well-known food critic who you’ve trusted before and you have some experience with them, you’re probably going to trust the food critic more than you’re going to trust the random guy. Well, the same thing with Google: websites that have been around for awhile, that have shown that they themselves are valuable, when they link to you, that link is worth more. A link from a site that’s either not shown that it’s really available, or maybe it’s just brand new – it might be a valuable site, but Google doesn’t know that yet – those kind of links, they’re not going to be worth as much to you. They’re still good to get, but they’re not worth as much. So as many of those really well-established site links that you can get, the better you’re going to be.

Now, quick warning for you, because when we talk about the things that we’re going to talk about here, and I say things like “the more links you get better,” a lot of times the tendency is to start thinking about the quickest and cheapest and fastest ways to get these things. You go online, you do a search, and you see a website company saying “Hey, we’ll get you 10,000 links in a month.” You think, “Whoa, that’s great. It’s only $100. That’s a great deal.” Well, what you find out is that they’re actually just going to go put a whole bunch of spammy blog comments on posts, and they’re not really good links, and they’re spamming people, and Google really doesn’t like spam. They also don’t like people trying to manipulate them.

So when you’re going out and you’re trying to buy links, you’re getting into private blog networks and all these different manipulative link building practices, it’s not a good idea. You need to do this naturally. You need to just allow people to link to you and give them good reasons to, but don’t go out buying links. Don’t go out doing all these kind of spammy, manipulative things, because what will happen if Google figures it out, they’re going to penalize you. Then you’re going to be worse off than when you didn’t have those links in the first place. So let’s keep it all natural here. We don’t need to go crazy and do things that Google wouldn’t like.

Another thing to look at would be positive reviews. This is especially for local organizations, but it can help national as well to some extent. But especially with the local, the more positive reviews you get on sites like Google+ Local and Bing Local and Yelp and sites like that, the better you’re going to do in your rankings. Now, there are limits to that; the difference between getting 20 positive reviews and 50 may not be huge, but getting that first 10 or 15 reviews is going to have a big impact. Plus, it’s going to help people who see you to want to do business with you or to join your organization, so that’s really good. So try to get positive reviews. Again, don’t go crazy on me. Don’t go out and try to pay people to do reviews or try to make up fake reviews. Let’s just keep it natural.

Another thing to look at is social shares. Social media is kind of tricky, because right now Google says they don’t trust social. They don’t use that as a ranking factor. Even their own Google+, they say that they don’t use as a ranking factor yet. Now, I think it has a good potential to eventually be a ranking factor, so it’s something to look into. Plus, usually the more social shares and likes you get, the more links you get, and so then you’re showing value through that, which is really good.

What you want to do is be able to show Google that you have value by getting good reviews, by getting links, by getting social shares and things like that. How do you show value? Well, have value. Don’t try to trick Google into thinking that you have value by buying links and things like that. Actually have value. Whatever you do, do it really well. If you’re a carpet cleaner, be a great carpet cleaner. Whatever you do, do it great, and that’s going to cause people to link to you, to write positive reviews about you, and to be liking you and sharing things about you. That’s good stuff. The other thing is to create really great original content, things that people would really want to watch or read and then share and link to.

By doing those two things, you’re going to naturally build up, get links, get social shares, get positive reviews, all those things that show Google that you have value. That’s going to move you up to the top of Google.

The second thing that they look for is relevance. They want the results that they show to be relevant to the search terms that people are using. So if someone searches for “surfboards,” they want surfboard-related things to come up. So you need to tell Google what your website is about, and you do that through something called search engine optimization, which makes sure Google can get to your site, it can read all the things on your site efficiently, and that you’re using keywords and things like that on your pages so that Google can know what your site is about.

Once again, don’t go crazy and start shoving keywords in there and stuffing keywords and doing all kinds of crazy things like that. Just make sure that your web page uses some of the search terms that people would use and uses it in a natural way, but does it so that Google can see “this is what this page is about.” So do some search engine optimization.

Something to be aware of is that Google has been getting better at concepts and entities and things like that, so you don’t even have to use the same keyword over and over; as long as you’re talking about the same topic, and you have relative keywords, they’re going to be able to figure that out at this point.

Another thing to do is to link to other resources that are related to what you do. So link out to other sites. Don’t be afraid to link out. It can be helpful for your users, if you’re giving them additional resources; it also tells Google, it’s another signal for them to know “this is what this site is about.”

Then most importantly, try to get relevant sites to link back to you. Again, I’ll use that surf shop analogy there. If you have a surfboard maker linking to your surfboard page, that’s a good signal for Google that that’s what that page is about, and it also gives you that link, which tells them it’s something of value.

By doing these things, by making sure that you’re well-optimized, you’re targeting some keywords on your pages, you’re linking out to relevant pages, and especially getting those relevant links in, that’s going to show them that you’re relevant, and then when you’re building the links and getting the social shares and the reviews and all that, that’s going to show them that you’re valuable. You do those two things, you will be at the top of Google.

We offer services here at OurChurch.com that can help you get to the top of Google. If you would be interested, please shoot us an email at support@ourchurch.com, or go to our website, ourchurch.com, and go into the SEO section. You can find information there about what we do, as well as requesting a free, no obligation consultation. We’ll be in touch with you to tell you how we can help you to get to the top of Google so that you can achieve your mission online.

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